A clatter of sounds, as of someone struggling, had come before he reached his room. As he bounded in he beheld his suit-case, over at the window, jerking against the sash and sill as if possessed of evil spirits. No thief was visible. The fellow, with the trap upon his fingers, had already leaped to the ground.
Within a yard of his captured burglar Garrison beheld the suit-case drop, and his man had made good his escape.
He thrust his head outside the window, but the darkness was in favor of the thief, who was not to be seen.
Chagrined to think Mr. "Brown" had contrived to get loose, Garrison took up the case, carried it back to the bureau, and opened it up, by skillfully releasing the springs. Three small patches of finger-skin were left in the bite of its jaws—cards of the visitor left as announcements of his visit.
The room next door was not again occupied that night. The hotel saw no more of Mr. Brown.
CHAPTER VI
THE CORONER
Not in the least reassured, but considerably aroused in all his instincts by these further developments of a night already full of mysterious transactions, Garrison, after a futile watch for his neighbor, once more plunged into a study of the case in which he found himself involved.
Vaguely he remembered to have noticed that the man who had come here to Branchville with him on the train carried no baggage. He had no doubt the man had been close upon his trail for some considerable time; but why, and what he wanted, could not be so readily determined. Certain the man had extracted Ailsa's letter from the pocket of the case, yet half convinced that the thief had been searching for the necklaces intrusted to his care, Garrison was puzzled.
There seemed to be no possible connection between the two. He could not understand what a thief who would take the one would require of the other. Aside from his money, the gems were the only articles he possessed of the slightest value or significance. Half persuaded that the diamonds and pearls afforded the booty for which his visitor had searched, he was once more in doubt as to whether he had lost Ailsa's letter or not. He might find it still among his things, at his room in Forty-fourth Street.